Random Thoughts on New Rules for Association Growth

In preparation for a brainstorming session with colleagues, I gathered my thoughts on the “new rules” for future association growth, and for what little it’s worth, here are a few of them, in a very rough form.

We have a market, not a product.
Expand our share of the market we serve, and resist the urge to seek new markets, which can be time-consuming and costly. Develop new products that meet the needs of our core market and retire products that don’t. Wash, rinse, repeat.

We can’t build on a foundation we don’t own.
Grants, sponsorships, “affinity programs” – these all have a role to play, but in and of themselves will not lead to sustainable, exponential growth because they depend on the whims of others. Build products and services that we own, that either don’t exist anywhere else or are better than anywhere else.

Dues are ancillary revenues.
The concept of “membership” has already changed and associations need to catch up. Membership used to be the realm of associations and American Express. Now it’s niche websites, professional service firms, “social media,” pay-as-you-go, pay-per-view, time-shifting, short attention span theater. We need to adapt. Just as we should not view members as merely people we can sell stuff to, we should not view customers merely as potential members. Recognize and celebrate both the member and the customer and explore new ways to engage both.

It’s not enough to collect data, we must connect data.
We are nothing more than the sum of the knowledge that we have about our members and customers. We must have a systematic way to draw connections between behavioral patterns, to understand motivations for participation in particular programs, to build on existing products with new products the market will want, to create new services beyond random “a-ha” moments.

Think fast, act faster.
As annoying as the Web 2.0 concept of “Everything Is Beta” is, it is actually the most important thing this latest bubble has taught us. Once a new product or service is identified, move as quickly as possible to implement it. This doesn’t mean you rush half-assed things to market and it doesn’t mean you drop half a million dollars on a whim. It means you start small, test it, learn from it, change it, test it, learn from it, change it, test it. There is no longer any time to wait for something to be “just right” before you launch it and there is no longer any reason to restrict “testing” to a small self-identified sample such as a committee when you can learn more from larger portions of your market. (Obviously there are exceptions here – I’m not talking about safety standards, etc.)